The measurement of blood lipoproteins is critical in predicting an individual's risk of many chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease. Previously methods of measuring serum lipoproteins were only capable of determining the concentration of the lipoproteins in terms of mass of lipoprotein cholesterol per volume of serum. It has been discovered that a much more accurate predictor of cardiovascular disease is the number of lipoprotein particles per unit volume of blood (referred to herein as the “particle count”). However, at present there is no practical method of obtaining the particle count of lipoproteins that is suitable for use in the clinical setting. Lipoprotein particle counts are currently obtained using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques, but this approach is extremely expensive, of limited availability, and is not effective to enumerate certain lipoproteins, such as lipoprotein A. As a result it is not suitable for mass screening of patient populations.
Consequently, there is a long-felt but unmet need in the art for a method of enumerating serum lipoprotein particles, but which can be performed inexpensively in the clinical context, and which has the ability to enumerate particles of all significant types of lipoprotein.